How to make Heat coach Erik Spoelstra happy: Ask about his team’s defense

Miami’s Rodney McGruder gets into Cleveland’s Kyle Korver on the perimeter during the Heat’s win in Miami on Saturday. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

CLEVELAND – Want to get on Erik Spoelstra’s good side?

Just ask him a question about the defense.

My colleague, Anthony Chiang, asked Spoelstra a perfectly appropriate question about how much the 3-point shooting of Luke Babbitt and Wayne Ellington boosted to the Heat’s offense in their win over Cleveland on Saturday. Babbitt made 3 of 4 and Ellington was 4 of 7.

“Yeah sure, when the ball moves and 3-point shooters are open as a result of that ball movement we want those guys launching them and we want them having a free and aggressive mind,” he said.

Spoelstra then said they’ve been “begging” Babbitt to launch the ball from in front of the bench, as he did Saturday. “It was a contested, three-feet-behind-the-line questionably bad shot, I want him taking that every time he touches it because I want him having that clear of a mind. It does open up things for us.”

Babbitt made the shot.

Spoelstra, though, could not help himself and used the question to illustrate why Miami must continue to apply defensive pressure.

“We should be able to win some games when we don’t make 18 threes and we don’t score 120. It’s not always going to work out that way. We have to be able to embrace the hard-hat, lunch-pail mentality.”

Which teed it up for my question, knowing Spoelstra was anxious to talk about one thing.

“You want to talk defense? What flipped the last three quarters?”

(Miami held Cleveland to just better than 40 percent from the floor (22 of 54) in final three quarters after the Cavs opened the game shooting 68 percent (13 of 19) in the first quarter.)

Spoelstra not only broke out into a wide grin, he gave the thumbs up and his voice reached another level of excitement.

“The first quarter, with all their guys out, they scored 34 on us and they’re shooting 80 percent (early in the game),” he said about the Cavaliers playing without resting stars LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. “That’s not it. Even if we score 34 we’re not trying to outscore teams and play a pick-up game. But we were committed to a lot more efforts.

“In the second quarter we had four guys ask to come out. They were that tired. Good. You shouldn’t be able to play eight straight, nine straight minutes, particularly the way we play, how hard we have to play.”